MESA Banner
Sharaf al-Din 'Ali Yazdi and the Ikhwan al-Safa in the 15th Century
Abstract
Sharaf al-Din 'Ali Yazdi is most famous for his celebrated biography of Timur, the Zafarnama, which is an indispensable source for any study focusing on the formative period of the Timurid Empire. The immense popularity of the Zafarnama as a historical source, however, clouded the personality of Sharaf al-Din Yazdi as a prominent intellectual of the Timurid period. In fact, in his own time, Yazdi was more famous as a poet and an expert on the mu'amma, anagrammatic poetry, and wafq, which was a divinatory practice using magic squares. He was active at the courts of two Timurid princes: Ibrahim-Sultan b. Shahrukh Shiraz and Sultan-Muhammad b. Baysunghur in Qum. In my paper, I shall discuss Yazdi's relationship with a little-known intellectual network called Ikhwan al-safa. The Ikhwan al-safa was mentioned in the works of Ottoman intellectual 'Abd al-Rahman Bistami as a scholarly network which would include such prominent members of the Ottoman intelligentsia as Sheikh Bedreddin. The members of this intellectual network seem to be interested in esoteric sciences and mystical philosophy of Ibn 'Arabi. Although the Ikhwan al-safa's presence in the Ottoman lands and the Mamluk Cairo has been mentioned before, its presence in Iran and Central Asia under Timurid rule is an issue which has not been adequately addressed before. My paper aims at contributing to the debate on late medieval intellectual networks through the prism of Yazdi's published and unpublished corpus.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
All Middle East
Sub Area
13th-18th Centuries